What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee? 592
markov_chain asks: "For a while I've been making coffee using home-ground whole beans and a standard drip maker. I settled on this method for its simplicity and good taste, even after trying numerous other methods (such as the French press, gravity percolators, and pressure percolators), each coupled with either pre-ground or whole beans. So far, the fresh ground beans are the only factor that made a significant difference in taste. However, when I recently spotted a a site that vaguely extols freshness, I began to wonder how much the freshness of the beans themselves affects the quality. Normally I thought the whole beans would retain the quality far longer, due to less surface area exposed to air, but clearly there still must be a decline; worse yet, it is difficult to gauge that decline since the sellers usually do not advertise the age of the beans. I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans?"
Fresh ground (Score:5, Insightful)
I found that I had to play with the grinder setting for a while before finding the ideal setting. However, I also found hat the optimum setting varies with the type of bean. I recently changed to a decaffinated bean after getting heart palpitations from too many cups.
At first I found the brew somewhat insipid, but after experimenting with a finer grind, I now get the same intense flavour of regular beans.
Divine Turkish Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
- For two mugs, dissolve one spoon of ground beans and half a teaspoon of sugar in a small amount of milk in a mug
- Heat pan
- Pour viscous mass into pan
- add two mugs of milk
- heat until the milk rises to the edge of the pan
- pour divine coffee into mugs, while avoiding the dregs to leak into the mugs
- enjoy
Roast your own (Score:4, Insightful)
Never store your coffee in the freezer or fridge. No matter how well you seal it, moisture can still get in. Also, moisture gets in when you open the package. Nothing stales coffee faster than moisture. So - roast what you can consume in a week and only that. When you're done with that, roast for the next week and so forth.
http://www.sweetmarias.com/ [sweetmarias.com] is the premier source of green tho I get my Kona direct from a farmer I know - they also have a decent home-roaster's forum too. You can roast with a West Bend Poppery I or II popcorn popper - I started off with the Poppery II - and there are roasters in levels of sophistication all the way up to the fancy drum roasters. I have a pair of Alpenrosts that work fine for me for the moment. I'll upgrade when they die but they're perfect for my coffee currently. Store your coffee in a button-bag and press out the air and keep it in a cool dark location. I use the coffee press exclusively because I like a heavier bodied coffee. Home roasted coffee tastes like it smells - hot, tepid or chilled. Zero bitterness and wonderful taste - something you'll never find in a store-bought coffee.
Re:Fresh ground (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simplicity (Score:2, Insightful)
Strong and weak.
otherwise they are all about the same.
go to Cafe du Monde (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I don't live near enough new Orleans to do that more than once a year.
I prefer pressed, but settle for drip cause it's less work for me. Too much trouble to grind it myself. I've recently switched from grinding it in-store to buying the blend from Cafe du Monde over the internet. http://www.cafedumonde.com/ [cafedumonde.com]
espresso in a bialetti mokka pot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Chemex (Score:3, Insightful)
I have made coffee with a Soxhlet, with buchner funnels, gravity filters, but my favorite is . It has a few advantages, namely that you're capturing all of the volatile oils, not carrying over the more bitter substances, and you're using freshly distilled water. [wikipedia.org]
Also, if you use a Soxhlet to make coffee, you need to run the extraction under slightly reduced pressure, so you aren't overheating the pot. However, if you just want the caffeine, this is definitely the best way to make coffee. Steam distillation tastes better.